


Don't Go

by notcoolenoughtobehere



Series: Frazel for Days [4]
Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Final Battle, Angst, Canon Divergence - The Blood of Olympus, F/M, Fire, Frank Zhang Dies, Frank's life stick, Hazel Levesque is a n g r y, Hazel Levesque is mega powerful, Hazel Levesque is sad, I feel like people forget that Percy and Hazel and Frank are one of the trios and are close, I love her, I'm not happy about it either, Ignores ToA, Monsters, No man may know, Post-The Blood of Olympus, Put the two together and what do you have, Sad Ending, That's it, The non-Frazel seven are v v v minor, ghost - Freeform, kind of, only suffering, why did I do this?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-19 01:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15498927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcoolenoughtobehere/pseuds/notcoolenoughtobehere
Summary: The day that Frank Zhang would die began with a victory.-Hazel fights a monster and some demons.





	Don't Go

**Author's Note:**

> Quick shout out to Yuna_McHill and the user carrie for all of their blessed support on my Frazel shenanigans

Hazel steps over another broken branch, tightening her grip on her spatha, the golden tip reflecting mutely in the dark. She can sense the million tiny fragments of coal and opal that lie hundreds of feet beneath her. 

She jumps at a small rustling coming from her left but still turns to follow it. It draws her closer and closer to a hazy light that drips over an opaque pond and the figure that stands in it.

Hazel freezes, her feet sinking slightly into the marshy ground.

Frank stands ten feet in front of her, knee-deep in muddy water. His back is to Hazel, his shoulders hunched almost in a fighting stance.

Hazel's breath catches in her throat. Frank turns as her small gasp echoes in the muffled corridors of trees that flank the swamp; as his eyes meet hers, his face lights up in perfect happiness and it is so beautiful Hazel feels tears gather in the corners of her eyes.

"Hazel!"

His clunky feet splash heavy in the pond water as he moves toward her.

The moon lights his face, his broad shoulders and chest bathed in the shafts of silver that hang through the gap in the trees. It illuminates his expression, showcasing the festival of heartbreaking excitement that lines his features.

He's barely three feet away, now. Close enough to touch. His hands rise up in an offered embrace.

She expects her hand to shake as she raises her spatha, but the spatha pinpoints Frank's chest with unwavering consistency. Surprise crumbles his forehead as he looks at the spear and takes a hesitant step back. A confused concern shines in his eyes as his gaze shifts from the spatha tip hovering over his heart to Hazel.

"Hazel?" His hands turn slowly, his embrace transforming into a peaceful surrender.

"I-It's alright - " Frank voice tilts up in a way Hazel recognizes immediately. He is not afraid, but worried. For her. It's enough to tip her spatha down half an inch. 

"No," Hazel swallows and attempts to moderate her oscillating tone into a steady pattern, "it's not. Because Frank Zhang is dead."

\--

The day that Frank Zhang would die began with a victory. 

They have just beaten Gaea. The relief fills Hazel's throat with emotion.

The sun is barely touching the outlines of the horizon, limning the rolling hills that surround the Californian valley. Hazel couldn't help but feel that this sun was much more beautiful than the one yesterday. Camp Jupiter is in disarray, overturned columns surrounding collapsed buildings, temples turned over into smoldering heaps. A small fire is still being extinguished near the remaining Seven, who stand, exhausted, staring at the sky where Leo has just dissappeared.

Hazel would hate that fire for the rest of her life.

Frank - beautiful, wonderful Frank - runs a hand down Hazel's hair, reassuring and hopeful, but his hand shakes, either from leftover adrenaline or grief. When he presses a kiss to her hairline, Hazel realizes the sudden absence of a piece of firewood that would typically press over her heart. All of the blood in her body drops to the floor. 

It's as if Frank realizes it at the same time. He pulls away from Hazel and looks at her, confused. He presses a hand to his chest and the fear that suddenly ignites in his eyes sends a shiver of terror down Hazel's back. She can see it in his face, the pain and tugging he's felt before when melting Death's chains with his life.

"Hazel - " Frank begins, his voice louder with panic than he intends. But she is already scrambling away to look through the fiery debris.

She remembers overhearing Frank's grandmother telling him that his life would burn short.

She rests on her knees but she does not remember kneeling. She beats her jackets on the flames and snuffs out a section of smoldering ashes before covering her hands in the jacket and sifting through them desperately. When the jacket slows her down, she throws it off and uses her bare fingers. Her hands are ashy and she swallows painful, panicked tears because they would blind her eyes too much too much too- 

"Hazel." Frank calls. Hazel spots a white bag that must have been Leo's fireproof sack, covered in the dark smear of ashes. 

She almost feels relieved if not for the tears that slowly streak down Frank's face. He touches his wet cheek as if confused where the liquid comes from. Frank holds a small piece of charcoal in his hand. As Hazel steps forward, the tiny block of firewood that represents Frank's life dissolves in his palm and flutters into the air like a murder of macabre butterflies. 

The world slows down as Frank's life swirls away.

\--

The monster disguised as Frank tips his head to the side.

Hazel steels her nerves. Her spatha lingers a few inches away and the monster isn't even fighting back. It should be the easiest kill ever. 

But Frank's eyes are staring at her from the other side of the blade, and she can't force her spatha across the three inch canyon between them. 

She closes her eyes before she strikes.

When she opens them again, the smoky form of the Shade is still reassembling itself into Frank Zhang's body, tendrils of hazy sinew twisting the final details of Frank's hands. Frank reforms a foot to the left, slightly closer.

She knows that the Shade draws Frank from her memory; but, gods, it looks so much like him, so hyperealistic that the need to drop her weapon and kiss him slams on her.

Of course, that's what the Shade does.

"Hazel - c'mon, i-it's okay - " A perfect imitation of Frank's anxious tilt.

Hazel swipes her spatha at him. 

A hole appears in the smoke of Frank's shoulder and Hazel's spatha passes harmlessly through it. The expression on Frank's face doesn't change and his hands are still raised in a half-surrender half-invitation. 

"Don't be afraid, Hazel. I-It's just me. We're okay." Frank reaches out a hand and before Hazel can move - _maybe before she wants to move_ \- closes it over Hazel's. 

With one touch, Hazel's world melts around her.

\--

Frank's stunned expression is met with Hazel's desperation. She reaches out like she could catch the dark flakes of his future as they blow away.

But she can't, and they are left staring at his stained, empty hand. 

"No, no, no," Hazel recognizes her own voice repeating the word.

"Hazel." Frank sounds like he's saying goodbye _why is he saying goodbye don't go don't go_

"Don't go. Frank, Frank listen, listen, don't go. Stay. Stay here with me - " Some rational corner of her brain tells Hazel that Frank has no control, that he could not choose to stay, but every other part of her is begging and pleading and bargaining with the universe to not let this happen, to please, please, stop this.

Hazel kisses him like it will save his life.

Spoiler: it doesn't.

The panic bubbles out of her eyes.

"Hazel. I." Frank swallows and a confused expression crosses his face, as if he's trying to perform some complex task. 

He lifts a hand, the one that wasn't clinging to Hazel's back, and holds it in the space between Hazel and his chest. Hazel gazes through her river of tears and cries out pitifully as the stain on Frank's hand grows out to his fingertips. Just like the piece of firewood, his hand begins dissolving into ashes, blowing away in a flurry of black snowflakes.

"No no no no no no no no no no no no nonono n-no, n-n-no," Her tongue is so heavy with frenzied sorrow that she cannot wrestle it into words.

"Hazel I-I - " A light dies in Frank's eyes. 

He looks like he forgot something very, very important. His face folds in painful desperation as he tries to retrieve it, a sob wrenching his throat.

"I-It hurts," he whimpers.

They are the last words Frank Zhang says.

"Don't go, Frank." Hazel whispers, placing a hand on his cheekbone. She pretends it is not fading into an ashy gray and dissolving in her palm. Her thumb intercepts a tear on its trajectory down Frank's face and she swipes it away across his temple.

Frank and Hazel mourn his death together, his ashes joining the smoky remains of New Rome.

\--

The Shade takes Hazel to Caldecott Tunnel, before the Great Prophecy.

Hazel knows that the Shade is tricking her, that her body is still holding a spatha up to faux-Frank's chest in the middle of a marsh, but another part of her _knows_ that Frank is standing at her shoulder and the California wind is slow and warm and they've been standing there for hours. She fights against the power of the Shade until she finds herself wondering what she is fighting against.

Frank says something in a misconstrued Canadian French, of which Hazel only recognizes the words _cow_ and _money_. She glances at him from the side, something hazy pulling on the corner of her mind. Though they've been talking long enough that her French is entirely exhausted, a strange sort of happiness erupts in her chest when his eyes meet hers like she hasn't seen him in a very long time. 

She ignores the uncanny feeling and flashes him a smile, a giggling erupting in her chest. The laugh feels foreign but Hazel isn't sure why. It's just another Friday or Tuesday or Monday and Frank is next to her and Hazel is happy. 

"We'll have to keep practicing, Frank." 

The Shade smiles through Frank's face. Frank's cheeks erupt in a dusty blush as he laughs and Hazel's distant worry dampens into less than a faint echo.

\--

As Frank disappears, the sun rises.

Hazel stands, gasping at the empty air in front of her where Frank had just stood, before crumpling to the ground in a shaking ball of anguish. She registers some sound in the background that must have been the Seven, or what was left of them; small, confused gasps from Percy, choked sobs from Piper, a strained reassurance from Annabeth, and a distant rumbling of thunder that may have been Jason. Two of the Seven had just been lost in one day. 

The ground shakes and Hazel wonders through her tears if Percy is causing an earthquake. When the rising sun is caught in the reflective gemstones that are suddenly appearing, Hazel knows that this is not Percy's grief. It is hers. 

When Hazel opens her mouth, she expects an angry scream to rip itself from her throat. 

Instead, a small, broken cry steps through, too quiet to be heard over the rumbling in the sky and the ground, and the earth almost shivers with the force of wrenching every precious stone to the open battlefield, one giant heave of hundreds of pounds of gold and gems.

The growing mounds of wealth hide the rolling hills of California. They are harsh, cold, and glittering, so bright and ominous that Hazel covers her eyes with a shaking hand as they rise around her.

Hazel is sure that she must have sat there for years. But when Percy places a firm hand on her shoulder, the sun still hangs near the horizon. 

\--

The Shade transforms the landscape of Caldecott tunnel into the sunny atmosphere next to the Senate House. The transition draws Hazel along, the strange tugging on the back of her mind slipping slightly into focus. 

Hazel feels for a moment as if her head is submerged under water, a rushing static in her ears that muffles all surrounding sounds. She sees Percy, wearing a praetor's toga, speaking with Reyna several feet away, but she can only hear a distant buzz in his words. A closer, louder hum indistinctly rumbles in her ear and Hazel closes her eyes against it, trying to concentrate. There is something terribly important that is slipping through her thoughts and she can almost focus the echo of it into a concept. A vision of a dark and musty swamp flashes across her mind. As the picture becomes clearer and clearer, the rushing in her head becomes louder, washing out the distant hums that wait at the false Senate House in New Rome. 

And then Hazel feels a hand touch her shoulder, and the louder hum transforms into her name in Frank's voice and she is snapped back to the Senate House in New Rome so quickly that every trace of doubt vanishes.

"Hazel?" She opens her eyes to find Frank staring back at her. The rushing sound disappears, replaced by the distant calling of a bird and the slight whistling of a breeze through the temples. Frank's hand is concrete and solid on her shoulder.

This almost feels familiar, a half-memory of the dark shadow of a ship passing over the Field of Mars. Hazel looks from Frank to the sky, almost expecting the wooden underbelly above her.

But the sky is clear and bright and they continue, uninterrupted. Hazel grips Frank's hand tighter, confirming his presence. His fingertips are rough from years of archery and his body seemed to emanate warmth.

\--

Percy finds Hazel in the Hades Cabin at Camp Half-Blood a week after it happened. 

It feels lonelier here, with only Nico to keep her company in the darkness of the cabin. A part of her wants to return to Camp Jupiter into the Fifth Cohort barracks, where she is surrounded by the steady heartbeats of ten demigods. But most of her is relieved that she is usually alone. It allows her to slip into silence without any prying eyes.

She is sitting on the side of her bed, holding the bag that used to safeguard a small, charred piece of firewood. The bed sinks as Percy sits next to her. Hazel traces the bandages on her hand, frayed and dirty on the edges. She had stared at the burns on her hand numbly, the result of useless sifting through hot ashes, as an Apollo camper had wrapped her singed fingers hastily, jumping between hospital beds. She hasn't changed the bandages since, and they were dirty and rough on her scabbing palms.

"I thought a girl and a boy can't be in a cabin alone," Hazel rasps as greeting. 

"Everyone's still scrambled after the battle. I don't think anyone cares right now."

After a second of silence, Percy reaches a shaking hand to Hazel's lap and tugs at the fireproof bag. Hazel lets it slide through her fingers.

"He. Frank," Hazel begins, wincing at his name, foreign on her tongue after days of avoiding it, "trusted me with it. His life. He took care of it for months and kept himself alive through - through all of it, through giants, and wars, and monsters and I let him die from a smoldering fire after the fighting had stopped. I killed him."

Percy doesn't say anything. He doesn't tell Hazel that it isn't her fault, for which Hazel is grateful. Percy's head sinks down into his hands.

"I don't even know what happened. It was there one minute and the next, gone."

Flashes of their quest flickered through Hazel's mind - Frank, stabbing his spear into the ground and semi-controlling his strange skeleton warrior. A giant pile of schist. Percy slamming a golden eagle into the cold Alaskan ice. All three of them, huddled together on an airplane nearly delirious with fear. But at least then, they had each other. 

Hazel feels the empty space where Frank should be like an open wound in her side.

After a moment of smothering silence, she hears him open his mouth to speak, but Percy Jackson releases quiet, empty cries and falls into Hazel's shoulder. Hazel holds him and waits for her tears to come.

\--

The Shade sits next to Hazel on a raised field under a tree. Temple Hill twists out in front of them, layers of sparkling marble bright against the green grass. 

Frank is showing Hazel his uncanny ability to mimic bird calls. He keeps performing an absurd toucan caw that erupts Hazel's snickering into laughs. His cheeks are dusty with an embarrassed blush, but he caws again, seemingly delighted at Hazel's response.

She's laughing so hard that Frank is disappearing in a blur of tears. She laughs until the sounds echoes into her empty chest and catches on her breath. Something about Frank's presence, his hand in hers, shoots an intense melancholy into Hazel's veins, and she finds she is suddenly, morosely heartbroken.

Her laugh transforms into a warbled gasp as a sob breaks through her lips. Panting, hysteric giggling echoes around her. A strange whirling fills Hazel's ears.

"Hazel?" Frank's voice sounds distantly. Hazel feels something drop onto her palm and she reaches her hand to her face to find her cheeks wet with tears.

And like glass breaking under a boot, Hazel knows. She knows that Frank is dead and she is actually alone with a monster. When her face turns to Frank - beautiful, wonderful, dead Frank - a pin of anguish drops from her heart through her stomach. 

She slowly shakes her head as tears begin to pour down her face. Panic lights in the Shade's eyes. He brings his other hand to hers, holding steady and concrete and so, so real.

"Don't go, Hazel. Stay here, with me." 

_Gods, she wants to._ She wants to ignore reality and live here with this perfect Frank, exactly as she remembers him. Hazel's heart trips.

"Don't go," Frank says again, and he leans forward, hands tangling in her curls, and kisses her like it will save him.

Spoiler: it doesn't.

Hazel blinks through her stream of tears so she can stare at him. She brings her shaking hands to Frank's cheekbones, tracing the planes of his face in a desperate attempt to commit them to memory. 

Hazel closes her eyes. She feels the familiar handle of her spatha, the cold marshy air beating on her brow. She grips it and shoves the blade forward, impaling the Shade.

When she opens her eyes, the Shade gapes at the spatha hidden in Frank's chest, its face a perfect imitation of Frank's surprise. 

Hazel nearly expects his body to begin blackening into charcoal, swirling away into ash.

Instead, the Shade breaks down into dust like any other monster, leaving Hazel alone in the swamp, having killed Frank Zhang twice in one lifetime.

**Author's Note:**

> yES I changed the time of the Final Battle for dramatic effect IT'S ALL I HAVE  
> Also it's been forever since I've read BoO so I'm sure some of the details are accidentally incorrect,,, please forgive.
> 
> This didn't end up like I wanted it to so I might bop back and fix it up - this is just kind of a second draft. I have a sister work of equal suffering that I am formulating atm so we'll see if that happens


End file.
